A short people’s guide to the political history of Nigeria, 1967-2017

Rilwan

4 months ago

Write a political history of Nigeria in the fifty years between 1967 and 2017 in a single, 2000-word essay? Well, one could say why not? After all, in his open letter to me published in this column several weeks ago, Professor Itse Sagay did it in about four paragraphs! How did he do it? Simple, but astute – he meticulously left out substantive details, thorny contradictions and daunting complexities, sticking rigorously to what seemed to him the essence of that 50-year history. To put this in concrete terms, Sagay chose as his guidepost the few moments and personalities in the period of half a century that, in his opinion and judgment, rose above a seemingly endless run of despair and tragedy for an overwhelming majority of Nigerians. On the basis of this guideline, Sagay arrived at the Buhari-Osinbajo presidency as the best moment, the inspirational apex of the entire 50-year period. From this, I extrapolate an important methodological point: without a guideline, without a deliberately delimited perspective, it would be both futile and fatuous to attempt to write about the political history of the country, indeed any country, in a single essay. But that is not the end of the story, the end of the line. What do I mean by this?

Simply put, it is not enough to have a guideline; it is also necessary to be critically self-aware about your guideline. If you are not, the judgments and claims that you make about a period of history will be too subjective and therefore mostly personal to you. To his credit, Sagay was completely open and honest about the intensely personal nature of his reading of Nigerian history from 1966 to the present. But subjectivity, while crucial, is not enough and you must be prepared to include a reckoning with the objective, impersonal and collective dimensions of history. This is not as abstract and as complex as it sounds and the proof of this contention is the fact as soon as you think carefully about the number of individuals and groups that are likely to disagree with your judgments and claims on the basis of sound, objective and indisputable reasons, you will perceive the limits of your individual, subjective claims. Permit me to make an elaboration of this point by briefly stating the nature of what I call a “people’s guide” to Nigerian political history in the title of this essay.

Nigerian history is part of both African history and the universal history of all the peoples of our planet. If this seems too broad, too abstract, we can break it down and express it in the following question that translates it into manageable proportions: at what times, at what moments have the greatest number of Nigerians felt good and positive about what is happening at home in Nigeria and how the rest of the African continent and the whole world feel and think about us? Again, I repeat: this is not as abstract as it seems. Indeed, 1967, the cutoff date for the period we are discussing here, happens to have been a momentous date for the interpenetration of local, continental and universal histories that I am elaborating here. Why? Well, because that date marks the beginning of the Nigerian-Biafra war and a clear indication of the decisive role that our oil wealth would thenceforth play in both intra-African and world affairs. This is the methodological foundation of a “people’s guide” to Nigerian history, this clear indication that what might be happening or not happening in our country, in our own little corner of the planet, might have great impact for good or ill at home and abroad.

Because I will, like Sagay, focus on the most positive and inspiring moments of our history in the last half a century, let me briefly make the clarification that a “people’s guide” to our history does not ignore or exclude the tragedies and despairs of the period, especially as they happen to massively predominate over the good, positive moments. As a matter of fact, the 1967-2017 period happens to coincide with the very period when both the reality and the image of Nigeria and Nigerians suffered innumerable and unspeakable calamities – at home and abroad on the African continent and the world at large. In the period, Nigeria became one of the world’s most corrupt, unjust and frightening nations, a country where, for the majority of the citizenry, it is a great challenge both to live and to die with and in dignity. But there have been moments of a hopeful break from the tragic pattern and like Sagay in his personal, subjective narrative of our history, it is on such moments that I will briefly focus in my “people’s guide” approach to the same period.

One last word of clarification and I will go directly to the moments, the movements and the personalities around whom, in the last half century, the greatest number of Nigerians and significant parts of the global community have felt positive and encouraging signs from our country. What is this about? It is about the fact that three particular ingredients of political dynamism and social progress are crucial in the construction of a “people’s guide” to Nigerian political history in the postcolonial era. Let me identify these three factors with a brief, succinct elaboration on each one.

First is what I would describe as a powerful renegotiation of foreign economic control and ideological domination of Nigeria and Africa, such that, at every level of the society, Nigerians in their millions begin to see the country and its place in the world differently from the more normative neocolonial subservience to the manipulation of the nations and forces that dominate the planet in their own interests. Secondly, there is what I would describe as the awakening and mobilizing of popular, unifying energies across the length and breadth of the country to such an extent that it becomes difficult, at least temporarily, for the political elites to exploit differences of ethnicity, religion and regionalism for their own nation-wrecking interests. Thirdly and finally, there is the involvement of the most progressive, idealistic and self-sacrificing voices and personalities in labour, academia and student organizations in movements for the renewal of the country’s present circumstances and future prospects.

The brief military rule of Murtala Mohammed (1975-76), is best known for the scale of its unprecedented anti-corruption crusade that, for the first and perhaps only time in the country’s history, took the war against corruption right into the protected ranks of both Muhammad’s administration itself and the leadership of the military. I now wish to add two other factors for which Muhammad’s regime stand unequalled by any other Nigerian military or civilian administration, then and now: the toughest and most intelligent anti-imperialist and Pan-Africanist foreign policy, in pronouncements and actions; the widest and most enthusiastic support of progressive academics, trade unionists and leaders of students’ and civic organizations. For the records, let me state here that personally, I was not one of the Leftist academics that flocked in droves to the ranks of the supporters of Muhammad’s regime. But I cannot deny the historic fact that in the entirety of my adult political life, no other military or civilian administration in Nigeria has equaled the Muhammad regime in the level of admiration and support it got from radicals and progressives in the universities, the labor movement and students’ organizations. To this day, American governments still chafe under the burden of the memory of Muhammad’s bold and intelligent rebuff of their manipulation of African political leaders, administrations and economies.

The powerful wave of popular-democratic anti-militarism that won M.K.O. Abiola and the Social Democratic Party (the SDP) the decisive electoral victory of June 12, 1993 combined unprecedented support throughout the country with the first – and so far – the singe instance in the country’s political history when North and South, East and West, Christian and Moslem, religious and secular, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless united around a candidate and a movement. True, radical and progressive intellectuals were divided about Abiola and the SDP (to the end, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti never embraced Abiola as a true patriot and a genuine Pan Africanist) primarily because it was widely believed that both were the creation of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. But the break with the norm, with the past marked by the event was undeniable: popular and electoral anti-militarism derives far more from the June 12 Movement than from any other source in our country’s history.

For our final item, think of the following fact concerning the wide support that the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) had when it was first formed, that is before it broke up into two factions: the late Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka were card-carrying members of the party! As a matter of fact, Wole Soyinka was so hopeful about the party’s prospects of uniting our peoples throughout the country that he accepted to be Deputy Director of Research to the late Bala Usman who was the substantive Director of Research for the party. Usman was not only much younger in age than Soyinka; he was also much junior in professional standing in academia to the Nobel Laurate. What was this all about? Well, it was about the fact that the advent of the PRP marked a radical break, a fundamental rupture with all previous political and electoral calculations in our country. All preexisting norms and practices of our political and social elites were questioned and turned inside out. How so? Well, this is because the PRP, as imagined in its birth, was like no other party in our country’s history – before and since then – in the fact that its programs and organs were not tied either to one or two powerful persons or to an ethnic group. In other words, PRP was the closest we ever got in Nigeria to the classic liberationist political parties of the Left on the African continent like the PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau, the CPP of colonial Ghana and the ANC of apartheid South Africa.

In conclusion, I hope that it is obvious that I do not wish to claim that any of these radical and optimistic moments in our country’s history in the last half century constituted the best time in our country’s history or, to use Professor Sagay’s preferred term, the “softest place” to be. No, far from this, I merely want to give an indication that, based on the three criteria that I highlighted, Nigerians in their tens of millions have, on a few signal occasions, been presented with a vision of a country about whom Nigerians themselves, the African continent and the world at large can be realistically hopeful.